HB commissioner attacks spending
By Nick Walter
Islander Reporter
Give Holmes Beach Commissioner Al Robinson this: He speaks from his heart. After all, Robinson, elected in November, said he did not run for commission to make friends.
In January, Robinson sent e-mails to Manatee County Commissioners Carol Whitmore and John Chappie, saying the cleanup of the Manatee Public Beach and its parking lots, bathrooms and trash cans should be the responsibility of the concessioner at Cafe on the Beach.
County employees handle those duties, and Robinson said he’s observed those employees while at work, and that they all “hang out.” Robinson said that if the concessioner handles those duties, the county would not waste money paying workers he claims “hide out and act like they are busy.”
Robinson said in a Jan. 8 e-mail, “The cost of the Mexican (that is being hired by the vendors … enough said on this) is cheaper than the ‘lowest’ paid county worker.”
Robinson would not comment further on why he referred to the worker as a Mexican.
“I’m not going there,” Robinson said.
Robinson, who, since he ran in November on the platform of lower taxes, said in the e-mail that waste is his “personal soap box.”
Regarding what he called wasteful spending on county workers at the beach, Robinson said, “I am passionate about it and I lose sleep over it. I planted the seed last summer, and I planted the seed again in December,” hoping to see some action on wasteful spending.
The Manatee County contract for operations of beach concessions at Coquina and Manatee beaches is up for bid. Four companies submitted proposals for the operations and will expound on their proposals to a county recommendation committee March 23.
And cleanup is part of the scope of work in three of the proposals. P.S. Beach Associates, which now holds the contract on both concessions and submitted its bid only for the Manatee Beach operation, claimed in its proposal that it would negotiate cleaning duties.
Whitmore, who said she has lived on the Island for more than 40 years, did not agree with all of Robinson’s e-mail comments. In her e-mail response to Robinson, she said, “Until you go up and ask employees of this county what they are doing and why they are sitting there, I respectfully ask that you not make those assumptions.”
So Robinson took Whitmore’s suggestion and, during the next couple days, went and spoke to the workers.
In a Jan. 11 follow-up e-mail to Whitmore, Robinson said he spoke with county workers who were picking up trash, cleaning toilets and taking lunch breaks in Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach.
But, he concluded in his message to Whitmore about the workers, “It was worse than I could ever imagine.”
Dee Schaefer, president and CEO of P.S. Beach Associates and owner of the gift shop at Manatee Beach, disagreed with Robinson’s assessment of the workers.
“I have not seen workers hanging out there doing nothing,” Schaefer said. “They have to have a 20-minute break. Having been here 19 years, really 21, I find it’s the best crew of all that we’ve had, from the maintenance crew to the plumbers and electricians.”
In a recent interview with The Islander, Robinson compared the county workers to military personnel. “If you’ve ever been in the Army, they make a profession of standing around and doing nothing,” Robinson said. “They take a tape measure and measure everything and people think they’re doing something. I’ve seen this behavior for years. I have taken whole days of my life to observe it.”
Regarding the e-mails and following county workers, Robinson said he’s functioning as a private citizen, and that he was concerned about such issues before he was elected. Furthermore, he said he does not believe that being elected to the Holmes Beach commission changes the nature of his responsibilities.
“The election doesn’t change what I’m doing,” Robinson said. “No. I’m wearing a hat as a private citizen.”
As for any problems with the city, Robinson said, “I see that as the tip of the iceberg.”
Whitmore said in an e-mail that Robinson’s job is to “legislate, not administrate.”
Moreover, Whitmore thinks that Robinson may be alienating other commissioners.
“He doesn’t realize that if you don’t make friends with your colleagues, you don’t get anything accomplished because they don’t support you,” Whitmore said. “So if you just turn around and don’t work with the commission, very little, if anything, gets done. And it will be an ineffective commission.”
Robinson said he is not on the city commission to make friends.
“I’m not there to impress anybody,” Robinson said. “I am there to get results. If people don’t like what I’m doing, vote for somebody else.”
| 
